Rule #1 in shooting great DSLR video is to support the camera with the steadiest way you can.
The good news is that, of all the things that make shooting HD video with a DSLR more difficult than working with a camcorder, supporting the camera is one of the easiest and most effective to deal with.
The question is… what works best?
One of the things I heard years ago that seems to work for me comes from the old school of film making. There is power is setting up the shot and letting the action happen in front of the lens.
In the early days all cameras and lenses were fixed. If you wanted to move the camera you had to mount it on something with wheels. Over the holidays I saw “Miracle on 34th Street” and laughed at a dolly shot down a New York street as the camera bounced and jiggled on the sidewalk. It looked worse than most indie productions on the web. They had little choice but the let the action happen in front of a fixed camera and lens.
Now we have video cameras with 20x zoom lenses, all kinds of SteadyCam type devices, and dozens of ways to change the position of the camera while it’s capturing the scene. But there is still power in letting the action come to the camera rather than the other way around.
When I learned about this industry from people who’d been producing films for years, I was taught that you only used a dissolve, wipe or other transition for the specific effect it produces. Otherwise you made a straight cut from one shot to the next.
This is aligned with the idea of setting up the shot and letting the action happen in front of the camera. If forces you to really think things through rather than relying on the effects to make your sequence work.
I know this is all old school and the new school throws most of this out. But I believe it’s the foundation for telling stories in this medium and that it’s worth learning the rules before you break them.
Like pretty well everything in our industry, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. With camera support, everyone has their favorite way to get the job done. We’ll spend a few days looking at camera support systems and how they can kick up the production value in your projects.
Who knows, maybe you’ll get an idea that will make your next project even better.
-a-
